You've gotta love conservatives who not only argue but completely believe the "logic" that a private healthcare system is cheaper than a public system because if there's anyone who wants to maximize profit, it's those greedy bastards in the the public healthcare system.
I'm not saying there isn't money to be saved in the health system, and people could certainly be educated better to know that they don't need to go to the doctor every time they have the sniffles, but the public system is still the best system.
Of course, that's not to say a private system couldn't save money. After all, a lot of people wouldn't be able to afford health insurance, so they wouldn't go to the doctor when they really should. And even if they did have some sort of rudimentary insurance, why order up unnecessary tests? Death is certainly cheaper than healthcare. Voila, money saved!
What it really boils down to is that that conservatives don't care about the system saving money, they care about themselves saving money. A private health system means cutting back on that most evil of evils, taxes. Taxes are so repugnant, even libertarians would rather vote for a government that would force them into pain-inducing chastity belts if they'd at least cut their taxes.
That, and a mentality that the poor deserve to be poor and that anything that befalls them that they can't afford to take care of themselves is their own damned fault. Apparently there is infinite money and infinite resources in the world, and that if everyone worked hard enough, we'd all be wealthy and happy. The only problem is that there is no such world. The only way everyone could possibly be equal is through communism, and that wouldn't work due to real world greed and besides, conservatives and libertarians would rather die than live under such a system (for the record, real communism isn't the same thing as the totalitarist Communist states we've seen, and the real thing requires everyone working together for a shared goal and doing so freely).
Even worse is that many of them would love to actively make the poor poorer by eliminating minimum wages. Not only is it hard enough as it is for many poor people to work their way up, it would be next to impossible if there's no way for them to be able to afford to better their education (don't say student loans though, because not everyone is able to get one, and scholarships only go to special cases).
You'd think conservatives and libertarians would be in favour of an accessable health care system. Sure, it wouldn't punish the poor sufficiently for being poor, but it would at least keep a sufficient supply of sub-citizens to mop their floors, wax their cars, and clean their toilets.
posted
by Tabby at 1/12/2007 10:26:00 a.m.
